Windows 10 Throwback: January 21, 2015 (Premium)

In January 2015, Microsoft held its second Windows 10 event, and while this one was focused on consumers, we also learned a lot more about its ambitions for a platform that would include phones, tablets, video game consoles, and other new kinds of devices.

Microsoft had previously announced that it would replace the reviled Windows 8.x with a new version of Windows called Windows 10 that would drop the emphasis on “touch-first” experiences and return the desktop computing prowess of previous releases. Going forward, the plan was for Windows to work equally well on different types of PCs, we thought, but really Microsoft was positioning Windows to work with a growing family of hardware form factors, the most exciting of which it would reveal later.

In the weeks and months after that initial announcement, Microsoft prepped for its consumer reveal as I suddenly found myself in an awkward position: I was suddenly forced to change jobs.

I had been associated with and working for Windows IT Pro, originally Windows NT Magazine, since 1999, but after a series of corporate acquisitions, our overlords at Penton Media had stopped letting us operate independently and were trying to cut costs. It did so in a way that I believe to be illegal: It started laying off our most experienced editors and employees, saving money on their expensive salaries and benefits packages. And then it eventually did away with virtually the entire staff and cut ties with our physical offices in Fort Collins, Colorado so that it could hire freelancers much more cheaply and make our organization, such as it was, fully virtual.

Don’t worry, Paul, I was assured: Your job is safe. But it was basically only my job that was: Rod Trent was the only other content creator who Penton didn’t lay off, and I was told that I could just keep doing what I was doing. Instead, I made them a counter-offer: Give me the SuperSite for Windows, which I had created in 1998, and I would continue writing Short Takes for, and continue driving traffic to, the main Windows IT Pro site. My boss thought this was an excellent idea, as did her boss. But by the time my offer made its way to the vice-presidential level, we were told that the SuperSite was “a corporate asset” and that it would require a 7-figure payment for me to take it. So I quit.

Well, not immediately. First, I set out to find a new job. I had only spoken with one company when I got a call out of the blue: Jeff James, a former coworker from Penton, had hooked up with a small Chicago-based company called Blue Whale Web (now BWW Media), and it had purchased a Windows IT pro site called Petri that it was trying to turn into the next Windows IT Pro. George Coll, the owner of BWW, had asked Jeff about content creators, and while it seemed like a long shot, he figured it was worth a try. In the end, it was great timing: They needed help, and I was ready to leave Penton. They quickly flew out to Boston, we had dinner, they met my wife, and I was off to Chicago soon thereafter to meet the team. By the end of 2014, suddenly, I was off on a new adventure.

Our plan was to launch the new website, Thurrott.com, in mid-January, and so I had two or three weeks to come up with some launch content. Better still, Microsoft’s next big Windows 10 event was scheduled for January, and that, too, was great timing. Thurrott.com went live on January 17, 2015. And just days later, I flew out to Seattle for the Windows 10 event.

Here’s a look back on what happened at that event, and what I wrote about it during and afterward.

What to Expect from Windows 10 in 2015

January 12, 2015

“2015 … is the year that Windows gets awesome again,” I wrote. Windows 10 would solve the problems created by Windows 8 and, unlike that release, it would be a great upgrade for Windows 7 users. That said, it would also be a great upgrade for Windows 8 users, and would work much like Windows 8 on touch-based devices and will move seamlessly between touch/mobile and desktop PC interfaces on hybrid PCs with detachable or transforming screens.

As a Windows Phone fan, I was particularly excited by the possibility of Microsoft finally making Windows and Windows Phone compatible, something it could and should have done when it released Windows 8. “Thanks to Microsoft’s One Windows strategy, Windows 10 will also be an upgrade for Windows Phone 8 users, offering universal apps that work between the platforms, a single online store, and more powerful experiences that we’ve come to expect from Big Windows,” I wrote.

I had questions. About the fate of Windows RT, Microsoft’s first ARM-based version of Windows. And about whether Windows RT would be essentially merged with Windows RT to create a new OS just for tablets. I didn’t expect RT to continue, but I had high hopes for the latter.

Windows 10 Will Be a Free Upgrade

January 21, 2015

There was a lot of big news from the January 2015 Windows 10, but this was perhaps the biggest.

“Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1,” I wrote, later adding that this was essentially a promotional offer that would be valid only for the system’s first year. “That said, there are some caveats to this deal, not the least of which—as I understand it—is that those who agree to this upgrade must also agree to let their PCs and devices be kept up-to-date by Microsoft going forward.”

This was also the event at which the term “Windows as a Service” first appeared. I didn’t yet understand how bad this would be, writing that this change “will in effect make version numbers much less important going forward. Technically, this should work a lot like Office 365, and with the same exclusions for businesses. Indeed, businesses are free (ahem) to continue moving forward with existing licensing schemes and controlling updates if they prefer.” Not quite.

I at least saw some signs of trouble.

“But consider this line,” I wrote. “’Once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no additional charge.’ This suggests to me that keeping Windows 10 up-to-date going forward is not optional. That in order to get this offer—or perhaps just to get Windows 10 as a consumer, regardless—will require you to let Microsoft keep your system up to date.”

Bingo.

Microsoft Details New Experiences in Windows 10

January 21, 2015

Describing Windows 10 as a “new generation of Windows,” Microsoft detailed more of the changes coming to the platform.

Cortana, Microsoft’s digital personal assistant, was coming to the desktop after debuting on Windows Phone 8.1. The firm was dropping the Windows Phone brand and would bring Windows 10 to this platform (and later call it Windows Mobile 10). It would include a new web browser, then just called by its codename, Spartan, that would “include keyboard or pen annotation, simple sharing and clipping, and Word-like commenting features.”

The Office applications would be ported to the new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and work across all of the hardware platforms that Windows 10 would support. (UWP wasn’t explicitly named, I don’t think, but Microsoft called them “universal apps.”) A new Xbox app would “provide gamers with access to all of their Xbox activities and, best of all, will let you stream games from your Xbox One to any Windows 10 tablet or PC.” And an exciting new feature called Continuum would “let Windows 10 adapt to tablet mode when you detach from a keyboard/mouse and then back to the normal display mode as needed.”

Microsoft Surprises with Surface Hub and HoloLens

January 21, 2015

Microsoft announced two exciting new hardware devices at the January event, the Surface Hub and HoloLens, and each would run a specialized version of Windows 10 and be compatible with universal apps.

“If you’re familiar with Microsoft’s Perceptive Pixel screens, the coming Surface Hub—which is a terrible name, given that Microsoft has an unrelated app of the same name—will look similar,” I wrote. “And like PPI, it’s aimed at the workplace … This beast will come in two screen sizes—55- and 84-inches—and offer 4K of resolution. It has built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microphones, and cameras. It can be used as a digital whiteboard that users can write on with a stylus, using a custom version of OneNote. It can be used for virtual meetings. It features multi-touch, so users can interact with on-screen elements naturally. It is … a big f@#cking screen is what it is.”

HoloLens, meanwhile, was “a double dose of nuts.” “It’s a full Windows 10 PC with CPU, GPU, and, yes, HPU (for holographic processing unit,” I wrote. “It can be used for fun or games, and it paints PC-based 3D UI on real-world objects around you so you can interact with them. It looks good in theory—my demo is later today—but also a bit Kinect-like, which might be a bad sign. (It comes from the same team, go figure.)”

Some interesting warning signs there. Key among them the games bit: A cool-looking video game was indeed a key part of the initial HoloLens demo, mostly because Microsoft at that time had no idea how this headset might be used. The firm later showed off more HoloLens games at a future event before walking away from this potential use case.

Hands-On with Microsoft HoloLens

January 21, 2015

Later that day, I had my first hands-on experience with HoloLens. It was … interesting.

“My initial reaction during the event presentation wasn’t super-positive,” I wrote. “But what I’ve come to discover is that this is the type of product that needs to be experienced to be fully understood. And in doing so, I now believe HoloLens to be an innovation far more impressive than the voice and gesture capabilities of, say, Kinect. It really is pretty incredible.”

There were several demos, Minecraft, Holo Studio, Mars rover, and Skype among them. And while I oddly didn’t note this in the article at the time, I had a nagging feeling about the field of view that would come to light later after subsequent HoloLens demos didn’t resolve the issue.

“The experience involved several activities performed with prototype HoloLens devices, which are not untethered and include big battery packs,” I wrote. “The devices themselves are much bigger and heavier than the shipping version shown at the event, and they are difficult to take on and remove.”

Windows RT Will Not Be Upgraded to Windows 10

January 21, 2015

Microsoft never addressed Windows RT during its Windows 10 event, so someone asked about it in the Q&A session afterward. Oh, right, it was me. And they told me that it would be upgraded.

The problem, of course, is that it would not be upgraded.

“During the Q&A portion of yesterday’s Windows 10 event, I asked Microsoft whether Windows RT would be upgraded to Windows 10,” I wrote. “Apparently I misunderstood the answer as Microsoft this morning confirmed that Windows RT will not be upgraded to Windows 10. Instead, the ARM-based version of Windows will get an upgrade that provides only some of the functionality of Windows 10.”

“And with this single statement, I think we can declare that Microsoft’s Windows RT experiment is officially dead,” I concluded.

Here’s the statement:

“Surface Pro 3 (and the entire Surface Pro lineup) will update to Windows 10,” a Microsoft representative told me, clarifying yesterday’s answer to my question. “We are working on an update for Surface [RT and/or Surface 2], which will have some of the functionality of Windows 10. More information to come.”

RIP, Windows RT.

Goodbye Windows Phone, Hello Windows 10

January 22, 2015

“Microsoft this week confirmed what we’ve known for months: it will drop the Windows Phone branding and simplify the name to just Windows,” I wrote. “So the next generation OS for Windows Phone handsets will simply be called Windows, and it will run on both smartphone handsets and small tablets, but with a user experience specially tailored for the device type.”

That didn’t really happen, of course. Microsoft used the brand Windows 10 Mobile for phones, leading one to wonder why they didn’t just call it Windows Phone 10. Anyway.

“Windows Phone OS is no more,” I continued. “It was always a custom version of Windows, really, and through the transition to Windows Phone 8 and 8.1, it came ever-closer to its Windows RT/Windows 8.x-relations. With Windows 10, that wall is coming down completely, and the OS that runs on Windows Phone handsets—or what we might now call Windows phones (with a small “p” on phones)—will be some version of Windows 10 … I would like to think of this version as Windows Mobile for nostalgic reasons, but Microsoft has called it Windows 10 for phones and tablets (and sometimes Windows 10 for phones and small tablets). But that’s not the name, it’s a description. The name is just Windows 10.”

Heh.

Sorry, Satya: No One Will Ever Love Windows Until You Fix This Problem

January 23, 2015

This one brings us full circle since Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella just said absolutely nothing about Window 10 again while still managing to excite those enthusiasts who, sadly, have learned nothing from the past. As important, to me, this article is arguably my first Thurrott Premium article, though it predates Premium by years.

“We want to move from people needing Windows to people choosing Windows, to loving Windows,” Mr. Nadella said at the January event. “That is our bold goal with Windows.”

“I have bad news, Mr. Nadella,” I retorted. “No one is ever going to love Windows until you fix this single glaring problem … Because today, there is a group of companies that stands between Microsoft and its customers. And while they are ostensibly partners working towards a common goal, they are in fact actively working to undermine both Microsoft and Windows itself. I am referring of course to PC makers.”

My issue, of course, was crapware.

“Crapware destroys the Windows experience,” I wrote. “It makes PCs more bloated, slower, and less efficient. The available disk space—which is at a premium in this age of low-storage devices—is compromised, as is battery life, boot and shutdown times, ongoing RAM and other resources usage, and more. Crapware is unnecessary, annoying—some even display pop-up ads—and hard (or in some cases, impossible) to actually remove.”

Microsoft’s solution to the crapware problem was its Signature program, which no longer exists. Worse, Microsoft started bundling actual crapware in Windows 10, along with advertising and privacy-invasive telemetry, further harming the experience from within.

We had no idea how bad it was going to get.